Transportation Commons^™

Breaking Barriers To Bike Share: Insights From Residents Of Traditionally Underserved Neighborhoods, Nathan Mcneil, Jennifer Dill, John Macarthur, Joseph Broach, Steven Howland

TREC Final Reports

Evidence has shown that higher income and white populations are overrepresented in both access to and use of bike share. Efforts to overcome underserved communities’ barriers to access and use of bike share have been initiated in a number of cities, including those working with the Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP) to launch and test potentially replicable approaches to improve the equity outcomes. This report describes findings from a survey of residents living near bike share stations placed in underserved communities of select BBSP cities: Philadelphia, Chicago, and Brooklyn. These were neighborhoods targeted for focused outreach related to BBSP programs, …

What Do Americans Think About Federal Tax Options To Support Public Transit, Highways, And Local Streets And Roads? Results From Year Eight Of A National Survey, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Hilary Nixon

Mineta Transportation Institute

This report summarizes the results of the eighth year of a national random-digit-dial public opinion poll asking 1,201 respondents if they would support various tax options for raising federal transportation revenues, with a special focus on understanding support for increasing revenues for public transit. Ten specific tax options tested were variations on raising the federal gas tax rate, creating a new mileage tax, and creating a new federal sales tax. Other questions probed perceptions related to public transit, including knowledge and opinions about federal taxes to support transit. In addition, the survey collected data on standard sociodemographic factors, travel behavior …

Online Repositioning In Bike Sharing Systems, Meghna Lowalekar, Pradeep Varakantham, Supriyo Ghosh, Sanjay Dominic Jena, Patrick Jaillet

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Due to increased traffic congestion and carbon emissions, Bike Sharing Systems (BSSs) are adopted in various cities for short distance travels, specifically for last mile transportation. The success of a bike sharing system depends on its ability to have bikes available at the "right" base stations at the "right" times. Typically, carrier vehicles are used to perform repositioning of bikes between stations so as to satisfy customer requests. Owing to the uncertainty in customer demand and day-long repositioning, the problem of having bikes available at the right base stations at the right times is a challenging one. In this paper, …

Understanding The Role Of Driver, Vehicle, Environment, And Policy Factors In Crash Injury Severity Among Older Adults In The United States, Chae Man Lee

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Driving is related to quality of life and health outcomes. Older drivers involved in car crashes have a higher risk of experiencing a severe injury or fatality. Understanding factors related to injury severity may identify points of intervention to promote road safety. The purpose of this study is to investigate how individual characteristics, vehicle elements, environmental elements, and driving licensing policy are associated with level of injury severity from no injury to fatal injury resulting from car crashes. Furthermore, this dissertation research utilizes the Geographic Information System (GIS) process to visualize the location of crashes and to identify the hot …

Annual Metro Regional Trail Count And Why Local Extrapolation Factors Matter, Geoff Gibson

PSU Transportation Seminars

Metro, Portland's regional governing agency, conducts annual two-hour counts along its regional trail every September. This upcoming fall (2017) will be the 10th year that the counts have been held, which means we at Metro can finally start seeing noticeable, long-lasting trends in the regional trail network. Perhaps more importantly, we are seeing how these data have directly impacted investments in future trail, bicycle, and pedestrian projects.

This seminar will cover the history of the program, details of how it's conducted and why it's conducted that way, how data are used (including an inside look at future iterations of Metro's …

Webinar: Developing Practical Dynamic Evaluation Methods For Transportation Structures, Charles Riley

TREC Webinar Series

Deteriorating transportation infrastructure is constantly in the news. Government agencies at all levels are pursuing methods to monitor structural health, so that they can prioritize repairs. In Oregon, the Cascadia Subduction Zone megathrust earthquake looms as a significant natural hazard for which our transportation network is ill-prepared. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) estimates that it will take around $2.6 billion over seven years to repair or replace many of the existing bridges in the state’s network to maintain lifeline routes after a Cascadia event. Funding for the scenarios envisioned by ODOT is not forthcoming, and the project …

Examining The Effects Of Policy Interventions On Increasing Electric Vehicle Adoption In California, Ethan G. Mcdermott

Master's Projects and Capstones

Any significant effort to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gasses must address the growing concern of the transportation sector’s inability to meaningfully reduce its emissions contribution. A major shift in the primary fuel used in the sector away from petroleum-based fuel to electricity is one potential way the sector can lower its emissions and transition into a sustainable future. However, a number of barriers face the electric vehicle market, including competing against an already mature vehicle market, battling consumer preferences, and overcoming technical challenges. This paper examines several policy proposals to combat these barriers and examines the impact similar policies …

Network Congestion Effect Of E-Hailing Transportation Services, Xuegang Ban

PSU Transportation Seminars

E-hailing plays a key role in emerging transportation services such as ridesourcing, ridesharing and taxis, among others. This seminar will present a general economic model to analyze the congestion effect of e-hailing services in a transportation network.

The model can help analyze customers’ choices of different modes, based on their value of time and the charging schemes of different services, as well as the overall impact of the services to network level congestion.

Behavior-Based Freight Modeling At Metro, Chris Johnson, Bud Reiff

PSU Transportation Seminars

Chris Johnson and Bud Reiff will present on a behavior-based freight model being used at Oregon Metro. This model will replace Metro’s current truck model with a hybrid freight model that both represents multi-modal freight flows through elements of national and regional supply chains and simulates the movement of individual trucks and shipments on local networks. Model estimation and calibration will also require collection of behavioral data from shippers and receivers representing a wide range of industries, common and contract freight carriers, business that operate non-freight commercial vehicles, warehouse managers, and logistics agents.

Key project objectives:

• Develop tools to enable …

Proactive And Reactive Strategies To Handle Surges In Urban Crowds, Jiali Du

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Most urban infrastructures are built to cater a planned capacity, yet surges in usage do happen in times (can be either expected or unexpected), and this has long been a major challenge for urban planner. In this thesis, I propose to study approaches handle surges in urban crowd movement. In particular, the surges in demand studied are limited to situations where a large crowd of commuters/visitors gather in a small vicinity, and I am concerned with their movements both within the vicinity and out of the vicinity (the egress from the vicinity). Significant crowd build-ups and congestions can be observed …

Peer-To-Peer Carsharing: Short-Term Effects On Travel Behavior In Portland, Or, Jennifer Dill, Nathan Mcneil, Steven Howland

TREC Final Reports

Peer-to-peer (P2P) carsharing is a relatively new concept in the U.S. Enabled by recent internet and mobile technology development, P2P carsharing generally involves a facilitating company connecting private vehicle owners to people who are interested in renting a vehicle. P2P carsharing has many things in common with business-to-consumer (B2C) carsharing services. Consumers join the service to rent vehicles on a short-term basis from locations dispersed throughout a certain area. Both services may allow households to reduce their private car ownership. However, P2P carsharing differs substantially from other models in that there are two distinct sets of consumers: those who rent …

Narratives Of Marginalized Cyclists: Understanding Obstacles To Utilitarian Cycling Among Women And Minorities In Portland, Or, Amy Lubitow

TREC Final Reports

Research has demonstrated that everyday or utilitarian forms of cycling are most likely to generate positive population-level health impacts (Garrard et al., 2012), yet significant deterrents to routine cycling remain, particularly for women and minorities. The primary aim of this project was to conduct a qualitative interview study that generated rich, narrative data regarding obstacles to routine or utilitarian cycling for women and minorities who already see biking as a viable form of transit, but who make relatively few bike trips. A secondary aim of the project was to develop a set of specific interventions that have the potential to …

Breaking Barriers To Bike Share: Insights On Equity From A Survey Of Bike Share System Owners And Operators, Steven Howland, Nathan Mcneil, Joseph Broach, Kenneth Rankins, John Macarthur, Jennifer Dill

TREC Final Reports

The number of public bike share systems has been increasing rapidly across the United States over the past five to 10 years. To date, most academic research around bike share in the U.S. has focused on the logistics of planning and operationalizing successful systems. Investigations of system users and impacts on the local community are less common, and studies focused on efforts to engage underserved communities in bike share are rarer still. This report uses a survey of representatives from 56 U.S. bike share systems to better understand and document current approaches toward serving low-income and minority populations. The survey …

Employees Communicating Within Transportation And Logistics Organizations: What Studying Stress And Acts Of Incivility In The Workplace Reveals About The Industry, Elizabeth Munyak Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project investigates the relationship of workplace stress and workplace incivility in the context of transportation and logistics organizations. Informal, one-on-one interviews with transportation and logistics operations office employees are conducted to answer this study’s research questions that examine the commonality, perceived norms, and perceived emotional and physical effects of workplace incivility in response to stress within the transportation and logistics workplace. Using grounded theory analysis, it is revealed that acts of incivility amongst transportation and logistics operations office employees communicate the conflict occurring at the industry, organization, and workplace levels of the transportation and logistics industry. The ultimate …

Bike-Ped Portal: Development Of An Online Nonmotorized Traffic Count Archive, Krista Nordback, Kristin A. Tufte, Nathan Mcneil, Morgan Harvey, Michelle Watkins

TREC Final Reports

Robust bicycle and pedestrian data on a national scale would serve numerous purposes. Access to a centralized nonmotorized traffic count archive can open the door for innovation through research, design and planning; provide safety researchers with a measure of exposure; provide fundamental performance metrics for planning and funding decisions; and allow policymakers and transportation professionals to better support the public’s desire for livable communities. Numerous jurisdictions have initiated nonmotorized traffic count programs. However, many agencies and policymakers, who need data to support investment decisions, are in locations without a centralized count program. This lack of access to count data may …

Ticket To The Past: A Political History Of The Mexico City Metro, 1958-1969, Maxwell E.P. Ulin

Grand Valley Journal of History

This essay outlines the historic political battle between Mexico's longest serving mayor, Ernesto Uruchurtu, and the nation's president, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, over the construction of what would become the second largest subway system in the Western Hemisphere, The Mexico City Metro. The conflict, which eventually resulted in Uruchurtu's resignation, was characterized by latent political tensions between the PRI and Mexican middle class that would erupt in 1968 and lead to the ultimate decline of PRI hegemony. I thus argue that the new Metro project did not reflect Mexico's democratic modernization--as its supporters meant it to do--but rather the vestiges of …

A Multi-Agent System For Coordinating Vessel Traffic, Teck-Hou Teng, Hoong Chuin Lau, Akshat Kumar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Environmental, regulatory and resource constraints affects the safety and efficiency of vessels navigating in and out of the ports. Movement of vessels under such constraints must be coordinated for improving safety and efficiency. Thus, we frame the vessel coordination problem as a multi-agent path-finding (MAPF) problem. We solve this MAPF problem using a Coordinated Path-Finding (CPF) algorithm. Based on the local search paradigm, the CPF algorithm improves on the aggregated path quality of the vessels iteratively. Outputs of the CPF algorithm are the coordinated trajectories. The Vessel Coordination Module (VCM) described here is the module encapsulating our MAPF-based approach for …

Stop Nuclear Smuggling Through Efficient Container Inspection, Xinrun Wang, Qingyu Guo, Bo An

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Since 2003, the U.S. government has spent $850 million on the Megaport Initiative which aims at stopping the nuclear smuggling in international container shipping through advanced inspection facilities including Non-Intrusive Inspection (NII) and Mobile Radiation Detection and Identification System (MRDIS). Unfortunately, it remains a significant challenge to efficiently inspect more than 11.7 million containers imported to the U.S. due to the limited inspection resources. Moreover, existing work in container inspection neglects the sophisticated behavior of the smuggler who can surveil the inspector’s strategy and decide the optimal (sequential) smuggling plan. This paper is the first to tackle this challenging container …

Barriers To Biking For Women And Minorities, Amy Lubitow

TREC Project Briefs

The health benefits of bicycling are well understood; numerous studies link increased cycling activity with improved health outcomes. Research suggest that the cycling behavior most likely to generate broad, population-level health benefits is everyday routine cycling—including running errands and taking other short trips. Despite these health benefits and new investment in cycling infrastructure, overall cycling levels in the U.S. lag behind many other nations. Amidst findings of increased ridership, research still finds that women and racial minorities are underrepresented as cyclists in North America.

While quantitative data may reveal estimates of these disparities, little is known about the motivations or …

Evaluating The Distributional Effects Of Regional Transportation Plans And Projects, Kristine Williams, Aaron Golub

TREC Final Reports

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) have long been required to consider the equity implications of their regional transportation plans and processes. Funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, this research aims to provide additional guidance to MPOs on how to evaluate distributional equity in regional plans and projects. The report begins with an overview of federal requirements related to equity in transportation planning. We then synthesize contemporary methods for measuring transportation equity and the distributional effects of plans and projects from a review of the literature and MPO plans and studies. The report concludes with exploratory case studies of …

Improving Livability Using Green And Active Modes: A Traffic Stress Level Analysis Of Transit, Bicycle, And Pedestrian Access And Mobility, Maaza C. Mekuria, Bruce Appleyard, Hilary Nixon

Mineta Transportation Institute

Understanding the relative attractiveness of alternatives to driving is vitally important toward lowering driving rates and, by extension, vehicle miles traveled (VMT), traffic congestion, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, etc. The relative effectiveness of automobile alternatives (i.e., buses, bicycling, and walking) depends on how well streets are designed to work for these respective modes in terms of safety, comfort and cost, which can sometimes pit their relative effectiveness against each other. In this report, the level of traffic stress (LTS) criteria previously developed by two of the authors was used to determine how the streets functioned for these auto alternative modes. …

Distracted Driving In Clark County, Nevada: Analysis Of An Intervention On College Students, Heidi Ann Manlove

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Distracted driving is a growing public health concern. Highlighted in the media, local and government agencies and in peer-review literature are increased associations of motor vehicle crash related injuries and fatalities with distracted driving, especially involving youth drivers. The goal of this thesis was to analyze the effects of a distracted driving intervention on college students at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Quantitative statistical analysis was performed to compare self-reported pre and post-intervention questionnaire responses of the experimental and control groups. Between-group analysis was performed using independent t-tests and ANOVA. Within-group differences were analyzed with Repeated Measures ANOVA (RM-ANOVA) and …

Transport Planning In Delft, Netherlands, Jan Nederveen

PSU Transportation Seminars

While the Netherlands is known today for the highest bicycling rates in the world, this movement only began in the 1970s. Transportation policy has been one of the critical keys to reducing automobile trips in the Netherlands.

Visiting scholar Jan Nederveen will present on transportation planning in the compact, densely populated city of Delft. Delft has been a city since 1246, and the historic street pattern is still visible today. The city has grown to 100,000 residents and covers an area of 5 square kilometers. Twenty years ago, the council decided to change the transportation philosophy from a car-oriented system …

Webinar: Economic Impacts From Bicycle And Pedestrian Street Improvements, Jenny H. Liu

TREC Webinar Series

As many cities are investing in street improvements to provide better biking and walking experiences, the economic value and impacts of these active transportation facilities remain areas where many practitioners, planners and policy makers are seeking more conclusive evidence. With various modes competing for scarce resources, planners and transportation agencies often struggle with how to justify infrastructure investments for non-motorized modes, particularly when driving is still the predominant mode of transportation in most cities.

In this project we assess property value impacts of Portland’s “Green Loop” signature bike infrastructure concept, illustrating the importance of considering both accessibility and extensiveness of …

Driverless Cars And Disability: Alternative Worlds In Media Presentation, Art Blaser

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

How liberating? For whom? At what costs (economic and social)? This paper is an exploratory examination of images that people have expressed about driverless cars, particularly as seen through particular media outlets. I am also concerned with the question of where disabled people fit. As I argue, many answers are narrow and superficial. Neither policy-makers nor media outlets should reduce disabled people to consumers of a product, while paying insufficient attention to related environmental and social issues. Although it would be easy to identify problematic media images of disabled people, there are also examples of nuanced, detailed analysis.

The author …

Urbanism Next: How Technology Is Changing Our City, Nico Larco

PSU Transportation Seminars

Advances in technology such as the advent of autonomous vehicles (AV’s), the rise of E-commerce, and the proliferation of the sharing economy are having profound effects not only on how we live, move, and spend our time in cities, but also increasingly on urban form and development itself. These new technologies are changing the ease of transport, the role of transit, and the places we spend our time. These changes will have profound effects on cities including large shifts in land use, changes in street design, a potential reduction on the need for parking, a shift on where we choose …

Vulnerabilities, Attacks, And Countermeasures In Balise-Based Train Control Systems, Yongdong Wu, Jian Weng, Zhe Tang, Xin Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In modern rail transport systems, balises are widely used to exchange track-train information via air-gap interface. In this paper, we first present the vulnerabilities on the standard balise air-gap interface, and then conduct vulnerability simulations using the system parameters that were specified in the European Train Control System. The simulation results show that the vulnerabilities can be exploited to launch effective and practical attacks, which could lead to catastrophic consequences, such as train derailment or collision. To mitigate the vulnerabilities and attacks, we propose to implement a challenge-response authentication process in the air-gap interface in the existing transport infrastructure.

Transportation Cost Index: A Comprehensive Performance Measure For Transportation And Land Use Systems And Its Application In Or, Fl, And Ut, Liming Wang, Jenny H. Liu

TREC Final Reports

MAP-21 and state laws are placing increasing emphasis on using comprehensive transportation performance measures that include mobility, safety, economy, livability, equity, and environmental to guide transportation decision-making. One of the toughest challenges keeping DOTs and MPOs from adopting comprehensive measures in the decision process is the lack of performance measures allowing consistent comparison of multimodal performance over time and across geographic areas. This project advances a transportation cost index (TCI) initially proposed by Oregon DOT from a proof-of-concept stage to implementation and operational use at the state, MPO, and community levels. After pilot tests and early adoption in Oregon, we …

Assessing The Efficiency Of Mass Transit Systems In The United States, Hokey Min

Mineta Transportation Institute

Frustrated with increased parking problems, unstable gasoline prices, and stifling traffic congestion, a growing number of metropolitan city dwellers consider utilizing the mass transit system. Reflecting this sentiment, a ridership of the mass transit system across the United States has been on the rise for the past several years. A growing demand for the mass transit system, however, necessitates the expansion of service offerings, the improvement of basic infrastructure/routes, and the additional employment of mass transit workers, including drivers and maintenance crews. Such a need requires the optimal allocation of financial and human resources to the mass transit system in …

A Household Daily Non-Mandatory Activity Participation And Duration Modeling Accounting For Person Level Budget Constraints, Ivana Vukovic

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A key methodological and behavioral innovative component in recent Activity-Based Models (ABMs) used for transportation planning is the household-level non-mandatory activity participation component. While traditional ABMs use a series of simple models to predict non-mandatory activity participation decisions in a sequential manner (which is often not correct), the Multiple Discrete Continuous Extreme Value (MDCEV) model can model both individual and joint non-mandatory activity participation and time allocation decisions in different out-of-home activities of all household members simultaneously. A key advantage of the MDCEV framework is that it accounts for complex intra-household interactions among different household members by allocating the total …